The Science of Sleep Otago Daily Times Take a look at an interesting article we found.
The Language of Dreams Edmonton Journal Take a look at an interesting article we found.
If You Wake Up to an Alarm, Does It Ruin the End of the Dream? India Times Take a look at an interesting article we found.
Throughout the ages we have revered "Beauty." But at what cost? How have those beauty ideals affected the average woman? How have those ideals affected Beauty, itself.
 by Shibbolethian |
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 by J. Peterman |
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 by DreadPirateRoberts |
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August 19, 2008
Standing naked in front of a classroom? Being chased by a one-legged man? Trapped in a reality show and can’t get out? A giant eye is preying on you?
To save on therapy fees, you might peruse "Field Guide to Dreams," Kelly Regan's well-grounded manual for making sense of one the most universal and puzzling aspects of being human. (Or warm-blooded, for that matter. Apparently all mammals and birds dream. Even, perhaps mollusks.)
Research on dreams is still surprisingly inconclusive. There seem to be as many theories of why we dream as there are theorists.
Jewish mystics thought they were messages from God. "A dream not interpreted is like a letter unread," declares the Talmud.
Freud, of course, thought they were a way to deal with repressed sexual urges, but he thought that about everything. His former student Carl Jung thought dreams were symbolic guides to cultural beliefs and the dreamer's ego, a viewpoint more salubrious to modern psychology.
Film directors think dreams are a great way to experiment visually, such as Alfred Hitchock's Dali-designed dream sequence in "Spellbound" or Fellini's heated visions in "8½."
From the Greek oneirous, Oneirology is the scientific study of dreams. In case you wondered, a person that studies oneirology is called an oneirologist. (Makes sense.) And recent scientific research suggest dreams may have something to do with the process by which the brain decides what items get transferred from short-term memory to long-term.
One thing we do know is that there are definite patterns in dream content. For starters, dreams that involve being chased or falling are pretty much universal, experienced by nearly everyone at one time or another, regardless of cultural, educational or ethnic background. (For the record, the thing chasing you is probably a problem in your conscious life you've been trying to avoid, and falling is all about fear of losing control.)
Age is also important in determining what we dream.
As children, wild animals and monsters are always present (your little brain's way of dealing with disturbing and poorly understood emotional impulses).
In adolescence, raging hormones and unfamiliar emotions produce dreams of drowning and committing crimes. That naked in public thing is a way, studies say, of revealing fears of social anxiety. (Public nudity dreams are particular to modern Western culture since people in other times and other places routinely went around with little more than a thong.)
In old age, you can take solace in the fact that dreams about teeth falling out have been recorded on Egyptian scrolls going back to 2,000 B.C.
One more thing: To interpret dreams, it’s wise to know what they are. Before going to sleep, dream recall specialists suggest a mantra like, "I wish to to awaken fully from my dream and remember it." That may be all it takes. Then, write them down on a pad you’ve kept handy. (Okay, you’ll try.)
Surely a lot as creative and thoughtful as our readers must have dreamt some doozies. Care to share? If your dream is particularly “imaginative,” you can always attribute it to a friend, and we’ll believe you.
Share the Eye:
Dreaming Q&A The College of Mythic Cartography Take a look at an interesting article we found.
The Interpretation of Dreams Kudzu Quake Take a look at an interesting article we found.
Another Dream Dreams Come True... sometimes Take a look at an interesting article we found.
Indeed, age does contribute to the content in our dreams. Most of us remember dreaming we c...
Aug. 19, 2008 12:55 AM
Do you remember your dreams?
31% 65% 4%
I've never been one for symbolic dreams. My dreams all have meanings - in that I believe, firmly and dedicatedly - but the idea of interpreting them to satisfy the innermost cores of my subconscious is... silly, I think. What are you going to do with the knowledge?
I'll always remember a dream I had in which people broke into my house. They drove off in an off-road Jeep. I leapt over the hood and stabbed the perp with a Japanese throwing knife. All my brother had to say was, "Whoa, cool car!" I've had four or five dreams of house break-ins.
I've had several dozen dreams of running. But when I run, I always have the advantage. I can sprint for miles, at hundreds of miles per hour. I am the wind. I am the turning Earth. I am the force behind the wheels of motion. Don't bother trying to keep up.
I dream of being homosexual. I dream of uncaring people. I dream of being something I'm not, or I dream of something I'm not being me. I dream of living somewhere else, as someone else. I dream of saving lives.
Dreams are nothing to me but exciting films that I watch in my sleep - but I interact, I live them, and when I wake up I see the world just a little differently. But it all goes back to normal, I forget.
I always forget.
One dream I used to have on a repeat basis was falling in an elevator. As the elevator hit the bottom I would wake up, sometimes in pain. When I would sleep and find myself mysteriously on the elevator I knew what would happen and couldn't stop it. Soon after these recurring dreams stopped I developed anxiety and panic attacks. I still get the odd panic attack.
I couldn't relate the dreams or the anxiety/panic attacks to anything in my life. Perhaps it was mid-life crisis, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of fear itself.
By the way, I can't recall dreaming in color....it's always black and white (and shades of grey).
I have died a hundred different ways in my dreams. Stabbed. Shot. Falling. Crushed. Drowned. My favorite death was dying in a battle, a sword and shield affair, where I was fighting at the prow of a hundred foot long Drakkar. But one thing never changes as I'm dying in every dream; I'm laughing my fool head off and having the best time I've ever had. Roaring with delight, howling with pain, giggling with relief, I fall back and the lights go out. And then I'm awake.
At that point I usually go downstairs for some milk and cookies.
Indeed, age does contribute to the content in our dreams. Most of us remember dreaming we could fly. Then, one day, that stopped. We couldn't fly in our dreams anymore. I actually had a transitional period for a few months in which, sometimes I could fly and sometimes not. I was 10 or 12 or thereabouts. But I still remember the night I dreamt that I tried to fly and wound up falling off a building. Within the dream, I remembered all those other dreams in which I could fly and figured it would work this time too. But it didn't.
As an adult, my dreams can get very artistic. Just last night, I had a dream that I thought might be embellished into a good story. I dreamt that I was a TV journalist whose mentor had just died and it fell to me to announce his obit over the air. Midway through, I start to break down. That's about all there was to the dream but who knows where the literary imagination might take me. It worked for Robert Louis Stevenson!'
Once, some years ago, I composed a song whose melody had come to me in a dream.
I usually have fairly nice dreams in my own bed. But, if I'm at a hotel or staying with family or whatnot, I often have terrible nightmares. I don't know what it is about foreign beds that gives me nightmares but they always end when I get back to my own bed.
The happiest night of my childhood began badly with a nightmare. I was so frightened by the witch in my dream that I woke up, terribly upset, went over to my brother's bed and woke him up. Rather than punching me and telling me to leave him alone, he was very understanding and let me vent about the dream. Then, we talked about dreams, about life, and about all kinds of stuff that still seems important to 7 and 8 year-olds. Through the bedroom windows, we watched the sunrise (the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen). At about 7am, our mother was shocked to hear our voices as we normally would never get up until at least an hour later. To this day, my brother is my third favorite human being on the planet.
more on the honor rollSometimes I awake while in mid dream, and try really hard to rush back to sleep so I can continue the dream and see where it goes. It never works, and then I wonder what that dream was all about. I fall back to sleep, only to awake in the morning and remember that I had a dream, but have absolutly no idea what it was about. Frustrating. Never the less, my dreams are always in full color. Guess I'll give it a try now. I'll let ya'll know tomorrow!
Many years ago my daughter was in high-school and displaying quite a bit of artistic ability. One work in particular she had done was quite good. It was a beautiful batique of the Korean flag titled "Harmony". My wife had a dream that my daughter had won first place in an art contest in a town fifty miles away that we had never even been to. We had only passed through it on our way to Tulsa. After she told me about the dream I pretty much dismissed it, but she brought it up again the following evening and said she just couldn't get it off of her mind. The next day she called the Chamber of Commerce in that city inquiring if they knew anything about an art contest. If you haven't already guessed, they were indeed having an art contest in two weeks that anyone could enter, and there was a high school age division. We paid a small entry fee, and entered the batique, She won first place out of one hundred twenty some odd entries, and received art supplies, free art lessons, and a $50 savings bond, and a big fat blue ribbon.
Needless to say, I lend a lot more credence to those dreams that seem a little too real, or stick around in my head a little too long. I always dream in technicolor and cinema-scope. I almost always have weird and horrible dreams in the afternoon if I take a nap. Then, I go down stairs and eat sushi. LOL!! JE you crack me up!!
Tony D said...
I dream of tornados often. I also dream of being underwater and breathing. I have also had "epic" dreams. Dreams so real that they leave changed, for a few days at anyrate.
You only live twice, or so it seems
One life for yourself and one for your dreams.
( John Barry and Leslie Bricusse, 1967)
Does anyone else have dreams influenced by food they have recently eaten? I knew someone who would eat oregano just before bed specifically to see how it enhanced his dreams.
"Epic" dreams? yes...miine tend to pick-up or continue where the previous left off...sometimes even after days or weeks. An ongoing story of random acts, seemingly pointless iconography, and logic is no where to be found...but I'm sure all dreams are rooted in desire and fear.
I googled the words 'dream' and 'quotes' and a funny thing happened. Up popped a zillion quotes and lists of quotes -- all having to do with human aspirations, self-confidence, limits, plans, expectations, goals, etc. When I think of all the words spent on sexual congress, the tastes of fruit, Mahler's Fifth, and then I draw a blank when it comes to a simple omnipresent activity like dreaming (in its organic sense) it strikes me as being very odd. But then I'm still 'in the dark' about a question I asked my father when I was four years old or so, 'Dad, how many earth worms are there in the earth?' Why is it that I don't dream about earthworms?
mark swaim said...
Hnery James said, "Tell a dream, lose a reader."
My friends and I were actually discussing dreams yesterday. I usually don't pay much attention to mine, but my one friend says that he has had dreams of entire days that were so realistic that when he wakes up he just thinks it's the next day. Kind of disappointing to discover that you didn't actually get anything done. To prevent dissappointment this same friend says that to test if he is dreaming, he asks someone in the dream a question to which he has no way of knowing the answer. If they answer logically, he's awake. If he's dreaming, ninjas pop out to battle him.
[By the way "Freud, of course, thought they were a way to deal with repressed sexual urges, but he thought that about everything." Best quote ever.]
What if none of one's sexual urges are repressed? Then do we dream about accountancy?
If mollusks do dream, then I am the living nightmare of millions of oysters and quite a few clams.
Eeels, are you implying that there is nothing sexually exciting about accountancy? What a sad and impoverished numerical life you must lead.
Selavy said...
My interest in the Surrealist painters of the 20th century has brought me here. Although image is first and foremost my forte, I feel obligated to take a break here for the moment. I guess this is as good a place as any.
Allow me to share a sequence that has visited me on more than one occasion over the last year. It interests me; perhaps it will interest you too.
My reoccurring dream begins as a visit from a tall figure dressed in a dark trench coat that is clearly too large for his body. The coat is three or four feet longer than the figure supporting it. Even thought he is defined spatially, his facial features are obscured by shadow. He is unrecognizable, a blank slate. He points to me as I face him. We are 50-feet away from each other. He gestures me to come closer. I am intimidated by his lack of expression. I begin to walk backwards as he steps forward. I attempt to increase my distance from the awkward figure. He gives chase but not in the way that a person would walk or run but more of a supernatural float. He is fast approaching and I am petrified. I find myself looking down as my speed increases. I am running on crumbled rock. Every step is loud and painful. As hard as I run, I never take a significant lead. He is behind me at every step. I look back one last time. He is no longer there. I am relieved. As I turn around I realize that I have just walked off the edge of a dark cliff. I am falling fast into darkness as I see the figure one last time from the edge above. He is watching me fall.
The fall wakes me up every time.
What does this mean? It’s so vivid!
Selavy
Selavy, your pursuing figure sounds pretty close to the ghost of Christmas future from the animated Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol. Substitute a hooded robe for the trenchcoat. Come to think of it, doesn't somebody in toon town frequently step over a precipice without realizing it? Isn't it nice to know a classical education hasn't been entirely wasted? It seems that you have learned well the stories from the New Universal Campfire.
I really don't remeber my dreams. Not sure if that means I am so repressed that its bad, Or if on the RARE occasion when I do remember my dreams its SO Meaningful that something either good or bad may happen in my life.
Either way I'm seem to be fascinated when other people tell stories like Tiberius & the art show.
I dream vividly and frequently, and almost always forget them within a few moments of waking, like vapors quickly dissipating. I strive to remember, but the details elude me, only feelings remain.
I have often experienced the strange phenomenon of a memory, strong and clear, sometimes including deja vu, and tried to recall when the incident occurred, only to realize that it was part of a dream. It's very disorienting.
I went through a spell of 'work dreaming' a few years ago. During the night, I would counsel students, work in my office or speak to colleagues. On several occasions I woke myself up lecturing aloud on microbiology, pharmacology, and biochemistry. Now that was SO annoying, for I then arose and did the very things I had just dreamt.
I have a recurring dream that I DO retain, that is very pleasant. I am in Hyde Park, taking tea at an outdoor cafe with a grand view of the Serpentine. I am meeting a good friend, and I am wearing a favorite dress of Mr. Peterman's. It is The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of-the one whose description suggests that The Maltese Falcon might have ended very differently had Brigid worn this dress to meet Sam Spade. It has been produced in a variety of patterns, all of wonderful silk, and if I could afford it I would have them all. This one is black with little white flowers, and suits me well. I'm wearing black retro ankle-strap shoes and a straw picture hat with a black ribbon and a wide brim with a curled edge. I am feeling very good, and my gentleman and I are having a lovely conversation. I can almost taste the warm scones with strawberry jam and Devon clotted cream. We walk by the water and engage in witty banter as swimming swans keep pace. It's peaceful and perfect. And that's it. I'm always surprised at the detail I can remember. For example, he's wearing a nut-brown suit and oxfords, obviously bespoke, and a red foulard over a Charvet white shirt. We get on famously, and I suppose this is my idea of a circle of paradise.
Then there was this dream I had one time-a wild mustang tortures me by eating a giant marshmallow, slowly, slowly, and when I struggle awake, my pillow is gone!
Just now I'm in a waking dream-listening to Stan Rogers sing 'The Witch of the Westmorland' and crying my eyes out, for it's the very essence of romance.
So, don't the dreams just come in every sort of way, sure? I have to go and find a hanky, preferable linen and lacy...
My dreams always seem to center around whatever I was reading or thinking about when I fell asleep. War novel, werewolf story, or student paper, my subconscious just drags me deeper into it. Which wasn't fun when I was working at a late night video rental place and I couldn't even escape the checkout counter in my dreams.
Spinner said...
I will now admit to this small and intimate group a secret of mine from my childhood. When I was very young, I told lies. They were whoppers and usually, not too clever. I mainly told them to get out of taking responsibility for some stupid thing I did that my parents had told me not to do. My father was a psychiatrist, and even he couldn't break me of this. But I was also plagued with nightmares of all sorts, usually ending with the world burning up. Finally, at about age 8, I put two and two together and realized that these horrible dreams only came after I had told a lie. My father thought I had finally matured beyond this phase and was so pleased to have me move on to other transgressions, but my real motivation was to end those dreams. No more lies, no more nightmares. No problem.
Now, I rarely remember dreams. But I do seem to have the wonderful gift that my mother also had, and that seems to have been passed on to our son. Whenever I have some sort of problem I can't work out, such as a pattern for some fiber project I am working on, or perhaps even just an original swim workout for me to give to a class the next day, I "sleep on it". I wake up with the whole problem simply and easily solved. Works every time. I don't think much about how this occurs because I don't want to rock the boat with too much analysing, but I assume I dream through the problem through the night and come up with the solution. A very handy gift to have and one I rely upon often.
A pox on me for casting aspersions on the tumescent accountants of the world. Just look at the Top Ten Accountant Euphemisms for Sex:
10. Using the long form
9. Getting bottom-lined
8. Increasing your cash flow
7. Filing an extension
6. Rounding off
5. Depleting your reserves
4. Filing jointly
3. Get up, get on up, stay on the scene, like an adding machine
2. Making your holdings grow
1. Getting Enron'd
Yes, indeed, these are people with whom one should party.
next, you'll be hinting that actuaries and engineers don;t know a good time until they can measure it...
Spinner said...
Oh, Moan!!
Okay, I scaled a tall and flimsy ladder to a tree house. The ladder was attached not to the tree but to the sturdy industrial looking high sided wood box that made up the tree house and was held at the bottom by a man either to support it while I climbed or in preparation to carry it away when I was done. I did not know which,
It was an unhappy situation lying in the bottom of that box until I noticed with pleasure that there seemed to be comfortable cushions at my back.
I awoke, partially, pleased to find myself asleep on the couch and headed for the loo thinking that there was plenty of time later to worry about getting back down.
??
I love to dream about money! But sometimes a dream about money is just that: about money.
My 'ex' is an accountant......when she said "screw you" (to me) it didn't have anything to do with accountancy sex....it was about her getting half of the money plus a bonus. Maybe that's why I dream about money.....and it's only money.
My 'ex' could party.......still does....and she's not even depleted the bonus money yet!
Perhaps we should discuss "nightmares" instead of dreams.
ExPat: I read somewhere that only five percent of people dream in colour - but everyone I've ever asked has said that they do dream in colour. So maybe it's the other way around - only five percent of people dream in black and white.
Olivia,
I must beg on bended knee for you to post a new profile photo of yourself in the ensemble that you have described, preferably actually in Hyde Park. And that would serve as an acceptable penance for that horrible pillow joke!
DPR, you shall have it when I find the perfect chapeau, for the one in my dream is no more, alas. And Hyde Park itself is a bit distant at the moment, but there is a reasonable miniature facsimile which may serve, that being the lovely wee park behind my garden where I walk of an evening. It offers a lake, swans, geese, herons in their several species and greenswards of charming persuasion. I will endeavour to recruit a suitable photographer as soon as the bonnet materializes. I love the Miss Blue of JP's offer, and will essay its acquisition, but it is best for more casual pursuits involving dibbles, horses, or mysterious bohemian meanderings.
Mi caballero, a hundred thousand pardons for jejune badinage-I lie in ashes in all penance for my peccadillo.
I read an article in "Esquire" awhile back (yes I do subscribe) that mentioned magnesium (an over-the-counter mineral supplement) may induce sleep, increase dream power, while relieving restless-legs-syndrome and muscle cramps. Unfortunately it can also cause mild diarrhea, which usually requires being awake.